Big Edit: My boy is not on a breathing tube. I couldn’t come up with the term for an Inhaler Spacer. Sorry for the scare.

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All of my flow seems trapped at the pipe between the road and the house. It’s sort of cordoned off.

So I’m going to refer to this as Water-Gate.

Anyway…

Last evening we made a trip to “Red Bullseye Store” and got a case of 6 gallon containers of purified water. (I now know that it takes 2.5 gallons to flush a toilet.

This morning we ran to Top Market and got 2 5-gallon jugs of drinking water. I tried last evening boiling down some fresh fallen snow and then putting it through the Britta water filter. Even top layer snow was kind of scary looking and when I put the boiled down snow into the filter; I think I heard it whimper… or scream.

Planned dinner last night was Andrei’s famous Spaghetti and Sauce-Meat. With the discovery of water lacking yesterday.. that got pushed off. We decided to acquire food from the finest of France, “Les Arches d’Or.”

This evening however, I was hell bent on making the dinner come together.

I think I was able to do dinner on 1/2 gallon of water. And my conservation efforts worked miracles.

The pot the spaghetti cooked in was the lower pot of the steamer for the vegetables. The spaghetti pot drained into the sauce meat pot for cleaning purposes.

In general all of the dishes have been fairly well rinsed and can be cleaned completely with a damp wash cloth and some soap.

Dinner was appreciated by all.

So… tonight, H & a play with Bubble Wrap. “Buh-bool” is his newest word. He’s picking up a new word almost every other day. And they aren’t easy ones. This week’s have been “Puppy”, “Snow” and “Bubble”. Snow makes me very happy, because it is a consonant cluster. Hopefully, this wont mess up his eventual study of Japanese.

While on the topic of the little “a”… I showed them Madagascar last night. Amusingly; when the “Move It” song came on; Aiden started to dance. Real dancing. Bouncing up and down to the music, twisting his hips, and swinging his arms.

But the real story comes from Wednesday and Thursday night.

Many have scoffed at the fact that we put Aiden down ‘manually’ every night. This means we are in his bedroom with him from the time we intend him to go to sleep until he’s asleep. At one time this could be upwards of 2 1/2 to 3 hrs. We got an iPod speaker system and programmed up some sleepy music. This came as a result at marvelling how amazingly DayCare could get him down for noon time nap. AND!!! AND!!! have it stick for 2 hrs.

So… this has added to the effort which has been improving. I’d say over the last month we’ve gotten him down in 15-20 minutes. And truthfully… I really don’t mind spending bedtime with him πŸ™‚

But.. the real struggle is getting him to stay down. Like clockwork he tended to wake up at 10pm and 1am. At 10 pm I’d work to get him down again. At 1am… I usually was in bed and just picked him up and put him back into bed with us.

Wednesday Aiden wandered out while I was in the bathroom after H had gone to sleep. C picked him up. I came out and took him. We went back in his room. I asked if he needed to be changed and he made a yes-ish noise. I turned to the closet; fetched what I needed, turned around and he was out again. Normally, getting him back down after he’s gotten out of bed is very difficult. This was an amazing change. He didn’t seem wet… so I let him sleep. At about 12:30 he woke again. He looked at me and made his sign for drink. (He makes the ASL sign for food and tips his head back as if he’s slamming a drink). I asked him to wait in bed while I refilled his cup. Again.. this is something we wish for that never happens. Well, until Wednesday. I brought him the cup, he took a sip and went back to sleep. I turned in assuming he’d not really gone back to sleep and I’d hear from him within 15 minutes or so. Or would I. When I heard him cry at the gate for our bedroom door I checked the clock and it was 3:15 am. A new Aiden record. Glee.

Until Thursday. Aiden slept in until 5:50 am. I get up at 6am typically. If I can get Aiden to stay in his bed until 6 am regularly. I consider that a complete win.

Last night was about 1:15am. About normal. But… I really think we’re making great progress. As for tonight… well.. it’s almost 8pm… So we’ll see how that went shortly.

No water… No real social life. Cancelled one of the few social events of the past 5 months that I have.

But things are going.

Fingers x’ed

Oh yes. One more thing…

Aiden is now fully capable to handle his inhaler. He can shake it, insert it in the breathing tube and knows where to press. He’s not quite strong enough on his own. He’s a marvellous growing person.

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